Electrical fire shutters Choteau bakery

TrayC Wurz of Choteau poured her heart and soul into decorating her recently opened cafe in Choteau.

Renovating a portion of a long-vacant main street building, she brought in family antiques from her home to outfit the dining space and fitted the kitchen with a 1950s-era gas stove that she cooked on with cast-iron pans, serving up fare ranging from old-fashioned baking to an all-day breakfast.

“You could feel the energy in the room,” she said.

But Monday evening, just more than a month after the Homemade Memories Bakery and Cafe opened to rave reviews, an overnight electrical fire has shuttered the business indefinitely.

The fire was cased by an electrical failure in the bakery’s kitchen around midnight Monday, Choteau Volunteer Fire Department Chief Matthew McCartney said.

A family renting an apartment on the building’s second floor smelled smoke, McCartney said, leading the husband to discover the fire downstairs.

After calling the fire department and evacuating his family, McCartney said, the man worked to fight the fire, breaking down a door to the bakery with a fire extinguisher.

“We don’t recommend any citizen going into fire,” McCartney said as he credited the man with helping contain the blaze to the kitchen. Volunteers with his department had the fire knocked down within minutes of arriving on scene, he said.

“For a bad-case scenario it went down really well,” McCartney said, saying they were fortunate the building’s residents detected the fire before the building was fully engulfed. “It could have been way worse.”

McCartney and building owner John Buck said that direct fire damage was largely confined to the bakery’s kitchen area, though other portions of the building were damaged by smoke and water used to fight the blaze.

“Smoke damage is so acrid,” Buck said. “They’ve got to do some cleaning.”

In addition to the bakery and second-floor apartments, the building also houses an insurance agency and his real estate business, Buck said. A damage estimate wasn’t immediately available, but Buck said the building and bakery were insured.

“It’s frustrating,” Wurz said, saying she wasn’t sure that insurance would cover the entire cost of damages. “I’m just kind of in shock.”

The bakery kitchen is gutted, she said, and many of the antiques decorating its main room are smoke damaged to the point where they may not be usable.

“Some of those things you can’t even put a price on,” she said.

Business had been going better than she’d expected. After opening just before the Fourth of July, she found she had to close some days to get caught up on her baking.

But less than a day after the fire, she wasn’t sure when — or if — the business would reopen.

“I’d like to think I’m not done,” she said.

Reach Staff Writer Eric Dietrich at 791-6527 or edietrich@greatfallstribune .com. He can also be followed on Twitter at @GFTrib_EricD.